BP put a Tom Terrific cap on the hole at the bottom of the sea. Maybe it will hold, maybe it won't, but the just fired CEO will get something like a million dollars per year from an executive pension, plus all his stock options. Screw the pooch and get a fat reward for your failure. It's good to be CEO with an airtight corporate contract.
Still hot and hopeless for most people here in California's Central Valley. The unemployment now staggers along in Bakersfield/Delano at just under 16%, according the last BLS statisitics. Double-digit unemployment figures suck, but when when you add four of the bottom five lowest median income averages found in California coming from Fresno, Tulare, Kings and Kern counties into the hose you get a dead zone that makes the Chesapeake Bay and Gulf Of Mexico look like they are teaming with life again. Way too few jobs, and those available do not pay much in these parts.
I have often wondered why people in this area of California continue to take such brutal economic beatings, and never challenge those who rule the range. A report very recently from the Brookings Institute clarified matters for me. In ranking education for the top 100 metropolitan markets in America, Bakersfield finished dead last at numero 100. Fresno came in at #95, with Modesto at #97 and Stockton at #99. There are precious few Masters and Doctorate people frequenting the old San Joaquin Valley these days. Hard to vote to force a change when you cannot read the ballot.
One place in the USA where cushy still finds a home happens to be in the very place most Americans hate the most, our nation's Capitol. The Washington D.C. area booms happily along with heaps of industry and corporate investments blocking out all the whining noise from the rest of the country. The Washington Post spent over two years investigating Top Secret in America. The reporters uncovered a huge chunk of our tax dollars this decade created nearly one million Top Secret clearances from over 1,900 private companies that are now needed to spy on everyone here and everyone around the world for our safety.
I am actually surprised there has not been a million man/woman march on Washington D.C. just to fill out government job applications these past two years. But, of course, working stiffs could never get Top Secret clearances to ever work in all these great jobs that still have lots of openings, but working stiffs can do the census leg work for chump change on a temporary contracting basis. The Washington Post describes how these very elite eavesdropping workers all live in beautifully exclusive Maryland and Virginia suburbs and send their little boys and girls to best possible private schools who train them to be future spies and make large sums of money off all those little fees, assessments and taxes from the 98% of the human pool without a Top Secret clearance.
Maybe you groove on having these government people intercepting your computer keystrokes, your phone conversations and tracking your every movement throughout each and every day via GPS, Google and various cellular phone applications. You and I paid for it, we just don't get much benefit from it.
Oh, did I hear you say something about protecting all the teaming jobless and uninsured in this country from the nefarious foreign folks who kneel on a cloth each day at the appointed time and bow to the East in prayer with hopes of annihilating all western infidels? Is that what we the people of the United Plutocratic States of America shiver in fear from these days?
Truly, I am much more concerned with young, illiterate and armed Billy Joe, Miguel, Duwann and Ashanti looking for a score in my neighborhood than I am from all the people in the Middle East and Asia these days who have a grudge with our government's foreign policy. Does anyone really buy an Afghanistan, Iran or Iraq preemptive strike on the United States? Could any dirty bomb do more harm to this country than what British Petroleum has caused since April? So why do we spend trillions we no longer have on spy versus spy games that resolve nothing?
I thought the Washington Post three-part series on Top Secret in America would have long legs and would be in the news for months, but with the very recent WikiLeaks.org release of over 90,000 secret documents about the war in Afghanistan the Washington Post story just disappears into the shadows, just like their just reported spies do. I know our government is all up in arms over this brazen public display of classified documents, which gives readers the inside look at how we prosecute war currently. In all honesty, though, who can be surprised at this juncture about anything we do anywhere on earth after so much deserved negative publicity from Iraq, Afghanistan and every place where we set up a secret prison to interrogate enemy combatants over these many recent years.
The war leaks uncover just more secret society wormwood beneath the shiny veneer on the decks of our teetering Ship of State. Everyone now shouts about the deficit and our incomprehensible national debt, but still refuses to address the rot. Most of the world's economic deterioration stems from rewarding a tiny percentage of the population while exploiting the desperate multitudes who try to survive day to day. The conservative mantra of tax cuts as an economic salvation only helps those with luxury suites, never those in steerage or business class. I hardly think you argue for much in the way of tax increases if all the money not already destined for Social Security and Medicare ends up funding a bigger secret government military machine and subsidizing cartels in food, energy, telecommunications and finance.
Thomas Jefferson argued for a self sufficient agrarian society where the citizens farmed and sustained themselves while bartering for services with goods they produced. Alexander Hamilton argued for mercantilism, a heavy dose of nationalism based on trade barriers and bullion, which needed banks, currency and an investor class to fuel speculation for profits. Jefferson died penniless, and farmers are nearly extinct in America today. Hamilton was shot to death by the country's first gun toting Vice-President, Aaron Burr, in the famous duel of 1804. Hamilton's vision is the battered rough framework of our economy today, even immersed in the quasi-globalist corporate culture of aristocratic self interest.
Here is an interesting statistic: since 2001 over 13 million Americans have filed for bankruptcy. That averages out to more than 1.45 million people going bust each year this decade. How bad is it today? The cumulative mortgage debt is now twice as high as the total net worth of all housing in the USA. Banks now own more of the housing market in this country than all the individuals in the nation do. The biggest joke on the American public is the stock market. Today 83% of all stocks are owned by 1% of the population. One last fact for you: the average federal government employee now earns 60% more than the average worker in the private sector.
I remember a vivid scene from James Cameron's epic film, Titanic
, where the great vessel raises its bow to the dark star-filled frozen sky as the stern sinks into waters. The economic imbalance today feels every bit as skewed as that boat before the ultimate fall.
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